MicroStrategy on Tuesday launched the latest version of its MicroStrategy One platform, including an explainability feature aimed at inspiring trust by showing users how the vendor’s generative AI assistant arrived at an answer.
The vendor unveiled the latest version of MicroStrategy One, which includes the MicroStrategy AI suite, at MicroStrategy World, the company’s annual user conference in Las Vegas. The new version is now generally available.
Headquartered in Tysons Corner, Virginia, MicroStrategy is a long-standing independent analytics provider. whose tools enable customers to explore and analyze data. MicroStrategy was a pioneer in embedded analytics, revealing HyperIntelligence in 2019.
Today, it’s one of the vendors most aggressively adding generative AI capabilities, according to Mike Leone, an analyst at TechTarget’s Enterprise Strategy Group.
While not one of the first analytics providers to introduce generative AI capabilities, it was one of the first to make these capabilities generally available when it launched MicroStrategy AI in October 2023. In fact, some providers still have not made the generative AI tools unveiled barely a year ago available to the general public.
In March, MicroStrategy updated its AI suite to include Auto, a customizable generative AI robot. MicroStrategy Auto can be integrated with third-party applications so end users can use natural language processing (NLP) to interact with data without having to leave their regular work environment.
MicroStrategy is making great strides in delivering trusted AI to the enterprise. I think they’re moving quickly to ensure that customers have the capabilities they need to be enterprise AI ready.
Mike LeoneAnalyst, Corporate Strategy Group
Now, as part of the latest MicroStrategy One update, the vendor is releasing its third version of MicroStrategy AI.
“MicroStrategy is making great strides in delivering trusted AI to the enterprise,” said Leone. “I think they are moving quickly to ensure that customers have the capabilities they need to be enterprise AI ready.”
Besides MicroStrategy, analytics providers that have made generative AI capabilities widely available include Domo and Insight Software. Qlik has builds an ecosystem aimed at enabling customers to develop generative AI models and applications.
New abilities
While the main potential of generative AI for business analytics is that it can make data experts more efficient and enable non-experts to work with natural language data, one of its drawbacks is the lack of precision.
For decades, the percentage of employees within organizations using analytics as part of their work has stagnated around 25%. Historically, analytics platforms have been complex, requiring users to write code to perform most tasks.
Large Language Models (LLMs) such as the GPT family from OpenAI and Google Gemini are changing this.
LLMs have extensive vocabularies that, when integrated into analytics platforms, allow users to interact with data using real natural language rather than code. It suddenly feels potentially accessible analysis tools to more users. Additionally, it reduces the time it takes for existing analytics users to complete tasks.
However, even though language models make it easier to interact with data, they suffer from AI hallucinations. If trained on the appropriate data related to a user’s query, the likelihood of a hallucination is low. However, this is not completely eliminated.
To address the lack of trust, vendors such as MicroStrategy are taking steps to help users know whether the responses they receive from generative AI tools such as MicroStrategy AutoReplies, which allow customers to essentially converse with their data is accurate.
AI Explainability is a feature in MicroStrategy AI that allows users to ask Auto to provide textual and visual explanations showing what the bot interpreted the user’s question to be and what it used to answer. The intention is to add context to the AI’s generative responses, provide what amounts to data tracing, and allow users to verify the tool’s work.
Other vendors offering similar generative AI explainability include Domo And Painting.
Beyond AI Explainability, a new feature in MicroStrategy AI that allows customers to update semantic network is significant, according to Leone.
By describing terms using natural language rather than code, the feature allows Auto to better understand an individual organization and interpret queries related to that organization’s data.
“I particularly like how MicroStrategy allows customers to enrich AI with their own knowledge,” said Leone. “This provides a powerful way to not only improve accuracy and reduce hallucinations, but also provide somewhat personalized responses within the context of their particular business unit.”
Additionally, the latest MicroStrategy One update includes the following:
Automated workflows triggered from any MicroStrategy One dashboard or application with MicroStrategy Auto so customers can improve the time it takes to complete repeatable tasks. Using PythonCustomers can connect to systems like Salesforce, Marketo, and Workforce and automate actions like updating customer data, triggering email campaigns, and approving expenses.
Auto Express, a self-service environment where potential customers can explore MicroStrategy AI for 30 days with no commitment.
Data Summary, an environment in Auto where users can view and work with datasets.
Auto on Mobile, which allows customers to run Auto as a standalone mobile application.
Auto API, a feature that allows users to connect MicroStrategy AI to any application using an API.
The impetus for the features included in the latest version of MicroStrategy One came largely from feedback from customers and partners, according to PeggySue Werthessen, the vendor’s vice president of product marketing.
Especially, The MicroStrategy community helped the vendor identify ways to make its platform easier to use for non-technical experts, she noted.
“Our improvements come from working hand-in-hand with our innovation partners, such as Pfizer, who have helped us work on many real-world AI use cases and evaluate different ways to improve AI. experience of everyday users – people who are not necessarily data experts,” Werthessen said.
Leone, meanwhile, noted that the new features taken as a whole demonstrate MicroStrategy’s progress toward delivering trusted AI to enterprise customers.
“This means improving Auto’s ability to interpret business-specific questions through the MicroStrategy Semantic Graph,” he said. “This means providing greater AI explainability in Auto with textual and visual explanations. And with Auto Express, organizations get a 30-day trial to test these capabilities in a self-service environment.
Businesses could benefit from these seven benefits by using generative AI.
Next steps
MicroStrategy first introduced the concept of “intelligence everywhere” with the launch of HyperIntelligence in 2019.
Although HyperIntelligence is no longer a focal point of the vendor’s product development strategy, providing data to users in their normal workflows rather than forcing them to visit a BI environment to interact with the data is. always, according to Werthessen.
As a result, MicroStrategy plans to continue finding new ways to provide its customers real-time data.
“The more we can bring the right data at the right time directly to the people who run the business, the more our customers can realize their goal of being data-driven organizations,” she said.
Eric Avidon is a senior editor for TechTarget Editorial and a journalist with more than 25 years of experience. It covers data analysis and management.
